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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 185 of 407 30 August 2011 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Met with my new language partner yesterday.
Brutal. Somehow, he omitted to acknowledge anything I said, proceeded to think deeply after each sentence, and went on to rebuild it from scratch. After the session, he said he actually understood everything I was saying, and that he was just looking for better ways to express things. But man that was brutal. I first wondered whether this would be ok, but then I realized that I've been lazy lately. I've been looking for the easy way out and I haven't been concentrating on improving the way I should have. I aldready have a lot of people who listen to me with compassion and let all (or most of) my mistakes go by. This might actually be an interesting complement. Time to eat some humble pie and get to work. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 186 of 407 30 August 2011 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A few days ago, I posted a comment on this article dealing with pitch (Transparent Language Blog). I first assumed my comment would be posted pending moderation, but 3 days later, I'm realizing it will never be posted. Essentially, I was complaining that as a language company, they should have made an effort to publish a more detailed account of pitch, one that looked beyond the usual platitudes. Unfortunately, I naively didn't keep a copy of my message.
I also posted another comment awaiting moderation on AJATT. Khatzumoto posted a video* where he is speaking Japanese. His Japanese is no doubt excellent -- and above my level --, but a person commented to say "My Japanese boyfriend confirms that even Khatz’s unscripted Japanese is like 99.9% indistinguishible from that of a native speaker." Following is my comment. If anyone can confirm or contradict this, please do so. While there is no doubt that Khatz’s accent is commandable, your boyfriend is not very critical. As a non-native, I can hear the accent a lot more that 0.1% of the time. Pitch is often wrong, and some sounds sound typically African (o’s for instance). In the last 15 secs, his buddy says “iRU?” with the right pitch and he replies with Iru (wrong pitch) twice, and then his buddy says sukuNAi with the right pitch and he repeats suKUnai twice with the wrong pitch. I’m no doubt nitpicking, but if I can find obvious things like that, I’m sure Japanese people can pick out a lot more. *The video is also here. Edited by Arekkusu on 30 August 2011 at 8:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 187 of 407 30 August 2011 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I actually think now there may be a fundamental difference in what we consider an equal level of speaking and listening abilities. For me, if I am able to speak for five minutes without too many stops, then I also want to be able to understand at least the essentials of what someone tells me in a five minute monologue. This is independent of whether I would use the same vocabulary or structures. If I can speak much longer than I can understand, it makes for unfair and non-fun communication. So by my standards, maybe not by yours, I am much stronger at speaking than at listening comprehension, a situation that you declared could not exist. I get the impression that my listening comprehension has not significantly improved in the past two years. My main improvement in that time was picking up more characters and more vocabulary. Much of the vocabulary I only recognize in writing, much of it I can also use in speaking, but in my experience I understand few of the new words if I hear them. On a similar matter, I used to advocate only learning vocabulary in the to-target direction as that would always bring me passive knowledge as well. When I started Greek, I found that the two are not necessarily linked, so I have a from-target Anki deck for Greek, and also for Chinese and Swahili, though not for Arabic yet. For Arabic I'm trying out an audio-heavy sentence-based approach and trying to see if this will help. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 188 of 407 06 September 2011 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The more you know, the more you know that you don't know.
That pretty much sums up last week. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 189 of 407 06 September 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That pretty much sums up my experience with Japanese so far. The simplicity of basic grammar just lulls you into a false sense of security and then you hit an intermediate phase and realise why it has a reputation for difficulty after all!
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| starrye Senior Member United States Joined 5092 days ago 172 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 190 of 407 06 September 2011 at 6:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Indeed you're right. I think it's a good thing because acknowledging that we don't know leaves us more open and receptive. But there is always going to be more to learn... so I think it's best not to dwell too much on this fact alone, and try instead to focus on the journey as it comes. Good luck!
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 191 of 407 09 September 2011 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There was some discussion on another forum about how English and Japanese ch/j differ. There are few sounds most people on both sides of the fence assume to be same but which aren't, such as h/f, ch, j, sh and word-final n, to name a few.
I was trying to help a Japanese friend say "button". Oh my. Even after I got her to say "tn" (transition from non-nasal to nasal), she just couldn't keep her lips open and instinctively made an m. We laughed a lot -- you have to! -- but it wasn't easy. Anything you simply cannot say no matter how hard you try? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5980 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 192 of 407 09 September 2011 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Generally with specific instructions consonants do not give me too much trouble but vowel control is another matter. Having said that, I am not a fan of the Japanese r when it comes before a y or after a n.
I had no idea that there was a significant difference between ch/j though - can you provide more information? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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